What’s New in App Development: iPad 2 and iOS 4.3

As most of you know, last week Apple® announced the release of iPad™ 2, available for purchase on March 11. As a mobile application developer we thought it might be good to quickly highlight the new features and see how it stacks up to the Motorola Xoom and Samsung Galaxy.

What is New?

The obvious first response from a consumer might be is it comes in white or black! Continuing on its physical features, consumers will note that it is physically lighter and thinner than the current iPad. It is 8.8 mm thick, thinner than the current iPhone™ 4. These physical features aren’t necessarily a defining upgrade but they do improve the iPad’s portability and everyday use, which in turn could increase consumers and business interest in using iPad’s and creating iPad Apps.

The most notable change is by far that FaceTime is now available with a front facing VGA camera on the new iPad 2. This is great news for consumers who pretty much demanded it as a new feature in the next generation iPad. The graphics technology is also said to be a great improvement over the current iPad, with 9x the current iPad graphics power using Power VR SGX graphics technology. Another really cool feature of the iPad 2 is its HDMI out connector. This allows users to hook their iPad up to their TV and play movies, video or even mirror your iPad 2 screen on your TV.

Being able to mirror your iPad on your TV has one obvious implication: Games. Although the iPad’s new A5 dual-core chip still isn’t powerful for high end gaming graphics, it is still pretty impressive, and it could turn the iPad into a very interesting control surface with a lot of possibilities. But besides gaming, even being able to "rent" movies on the iPad 2 and then stream them to your TV is still pretty impressive, though some phones and other devices can do that too.

And, being an Apple, you will of course need to purchase the HDMI to 30-pin adapter dongle separately.

Software and Apps

Also of note is that the iPad 2 will be running latest version of iOS which is iOS 4.3. This includes a few updates to improve performance and to take advantage of some of the iPad 2’s hardware features such as a front and back camera, as well as some user interface improvements.

From an app development perspective, not much has changed. There is a new beta SDK available for iOS 4.3 for developers, but they will find that very little has changed from their end. Apps that function on the first generation iPad will also function on the iPad 2. The biggest benefit though is that apps can now take advantage of the new hardware features for the iPad 2 and be optimized for the device.

This means that any app for the iPhone 4 using the cameras could also work fairly seamlessly on the iPad 2, although some optimization may need to occur to take advantage of the larger display. However, improved performance, connectivity, and an even more portable design also provide incentive for developers to create apps specifically for the tablet experience.

Looking Forward

Even though the Android now has the largest share of the smartphone market, Apple is still leading the way in terms of innovation. As the iPad becomes a mainstream device, tablet software will become increasingly important. This will eventually segment into its own category as developers work to create a meaningful software experience on the tablet, rather than just porting over apps from smartphones.

Also, the ability to mirror the screen onto a TV, as well as the ability to do real-time graphics processing provides a lot of interesting possibilities for app developers.

Steve Loper, one of the senior quality engineers at Amadeus Consulting recently wrote an article outlining some of the possibilities and limitations of tablet software development. In the article he discusses the limitations of tablets as "creation devices" and asks "what will it take to make the tablet into a creation device without changing it into a laptop?"

Steve’s answer was that it is more about the software (the app) than about the hardware supporting it. As he said, good software design will enable a new input paradigm and enable people to create – be it images, writings, or other creations— as well as they can elsewhere.

With the iPad 2, it seems that everything is in place to allow people to easily consume information and entertainment, and now the framework is in place for innovative designers to come up with good creation applications.